Skip to main content

What To Do First to Make a Profit

The PF Women Team at our Annual Team Retreat  ~ 2018 Today on Seth Godin's blog, he said: It's tempting to decide to make a profit first, then invest in training, people, facilities, promotion, customer service and most of all, doing important work. In general, though, it goes the other way. Yes, it does. If you are waiting to make a profit before you do these things, in my experience you're  not going to make a profit. So many organizations, ministries and churches are struggling with financial issues. I know your pain. As anyone who follows our story knows, our ministry was in a ton of debt four years ago when I came on as director.  Since that time, we've gotten out of debt and turned a profit every year.  God has done amazing things through out team, for which we give Him the glory! I find that what Seth is saying here is absolutely true, with one disclaimer. For Christian leaders, spiritual disciplines must always be first. Before we started i...
Post a Comment

Praise and worship all the time???

SOMEBODY GET ME A PARIS TEA! Thank you. Okay, I'm sitting here with a cup of Paris tea (my favorite) trying my best to calm myself down.

I have Christmas tree woes. Family dissension woes. Housework woes. What is it about this day? What is it? What is it? I don't want to be a complainer. Truly I don't. There are bigger things going on in the world other than a Christmas tree malfunction. People out there are dealing with big family problems, sickness and disease. There's the war in Iraq. There are starving children in Africa. I know my problems are small potatoes. But honestly, right now I'm irritated and I just need to calm down. So indulge me for a minute and for those that don't want to, just read somebody else's blog.

As usual the guys brought the Christmas tree in the day after Thanksgiving and set it up and just left it there for me to do my thing. Jordan checked five strands of lights to make sure they worked. And so then the work really began. 

Nobody wants to do lights, me included but I always end up doing them. Somebody has to. Savanna and Jordan said they'd help this year but the whole time they argued. All the while Amy Grant was singing, "just hear those sleigh bells jingle and ring ting tinglin' too..." and meanwhile the two of them are hurling Christmas stuff across the room at each other. 

Well after enduring that fiasco, we plug the tree in and a third of it is not working. I was frustrated, but a second later, Jordan just touched the tree, and "boom!" they came on. Halleluiah! I said, "kids leave it on, do not touch it again. Just leave it here until Christmas day, and things will be fine, thank you very much."

I proceeded to put all the beads and ornaments on. I thought, "it's a wonderful life." I went around the next few hours working on the rest of the decor, listening to XM Holiday music going la la la la la and thinking to myself, "it's the most wonderful time of the year especially because both Jordan and Savanna busied themselves in separate areas of the house and are no longer having their little spat!"

But then today I have noticed on and off as I am doing my mountain of church work and house work that the trees are periodically off. So I yell, "WHO TURNED OFF THE TREES?" To which one of the kids say, "I did..." To which I say, "And WHY pray tell, have you done that?" No real solid answer back, just an "I dunno" type thing. There is SOMETHING about a button that makes people feel they just HAVE to touch it.

All day long I've gone back and forth between my briefcase to my phone to my house, getting a myriad of things done all the while with a dull headache. Maybe it's PMS. Maybe it's the devil. Maybe it's just normal life and I have too high of expectations. But at one point both the boys (and some of their friends who were here spending the night) and Savanna were having another one of their brou-ha-ha's. This was all surrounding Playstation, which is often an issue of spiritual warfare in our house. In the midst of this Savanna says, "Mom, can I go to Savannah Dempsey's? Her Mom says it's alright."

"You betcha! Great idea!"

Mrs. Dempsey was kind enough to even come over and pick her up and she stayed there for 3 hours. I was able to finish the housework, ironing all the family's clothes for tommorrow, making a few more "care calls", returning messages, working on a message for Wednesday, washing and folding two loads of laundry, and more without hearing, "Mom...get her out of here! She's touching the Playstation again! She's bugging us!" ...

"No I wasn't, dork!"

"Yes you were, liar!"

There was no more la la la la la most wonderful time of the year stuff for me. I began singing "through many dangers, toils and snares I have already come, tis grace that brought me safe thus far and grace will lead me home..." Okey dokey...

So about 30 minutes ago I'm doing the third load of dishes for the day and getting the briefcase packed for tomorrow and I look over and see, only 1/2 the family tree is lit. WHY, WHY, WHY? So I ask this question and I find out, somebody just felt they had to go over and press the button to turn it off. So I yell, "WHATEVER! I'm not fixing it! We will just have an unlit tree for Christmas since no one in this house can keep their hands to themselves! Enjoy your UNLIT tree, everybody!"

To which Larry says, "Honey, why are you so upset? Calm down." He proceeds to go over and take a look at the tree. And after several moments of looking at it he says, "Deanna, how in the world did you do these lights in the first place anyway?" He proceeds to tell me all the reasons they were put on the tree wrong. (I put them on from the top down...I plugged them all into one switch, etc.) Pardon me, it's been a while since I graduated from Christmas tree lighting school.

So it's MY FAULT that nobody in this house can keep their hands off of an electric switch to turn the tree on or off???!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

Like I said, it's time to sit here and have a Paris tea. AND take a long hot bath before bed. Misty told me yesterday that a lady she works with asked her, "So, when you are married to a pastor, what's it like? Do you just sit around at home and praise and worship all the time?" 

I don't know how Misty kept a straight face on that one. Some of the time might be praise and worship, but for sure some of the time we're just praying and interceding that we won't lose our minds.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Some people will never understand this...

And that's okay. Just let us be as we lavish love upon the fur-kids of the world. It doesn't mean we don't care about people. We do care. In fact most of the people I know who are great pet lovers are also the greatest philanthropists. If you're not a dog lover, you might not understand the overwhelming intensity that many of us felt about Tank's reunion this past week. You might think we've lost our marbles. That's okay, we think you've lost your heart. ;)  Before I go on with this post, let me say that we were delighted that CBS 10 posted the video and article about Tank and his Celebration Church reunion yesterday. Click here to watch it. (But then come back!) If you haven't realized it, there is a revolution in America about dogs. Dogs have always been loved and known as the most loyal companions ~ "man's best friend". But things have gone way beyond this. Dogs aren't just dogs or friends anymore. They are family me...
3 comments
Read more

What To Do First to Make a Profit

The PF Women Team at our Annual Team Retreat  ~ 2018 Today on Seth Godin's blog, he said: It's tempting to decide to make a profit first, then invest in training, people, facilities, promotion, customer service and most of all, doing important work. In general, though, it goes the other way. Yes, it does. If you are waiting to make a profit before you do these things, in my experience you're  not going to make a profit. So many organizations, ministries and churches are struggling with financial issues. I know your pain. As anyone who follows our story knows, our ministry was in a ton of debt four years ago when I came on as director.  Since that time, we've gotten out of debt and turned a profit every year.  God has done amazing things through out team, for which we give Him the glory! I find that what Seth is saying here is absolutely true, with one disclaimer. For Christian leaders, spiritual disciplines must always be first. Before we started i...
Post a Comment
Read more

Sisterhood Rises Up To Change Lives Forever

God is in the business of preserving families. It is His heart. It's my heart too. And, I'll unabashedly say here that I believe it should be everyone's heart. Everyone likes good news and I've got some for you today. If you are in doubt that God still speaks today and that He uses people to accomplish His work, I pray this will speak to you. Last night I was sitting in service at Celebration Church where we are pastors, and my husband was preaching. His message was about what we want to be remembered for in life, and he made the statement that we can't change our past but we can change the future.  In that moment, God spoke to me. He began to give me my next post for Lost Daughters, where I'm also a blogger. To be honest it's more than just another place where I blog. It's a sisterhood. A lifeline. A place that has come to mean a great deal to me, because of the amazing women who are there. During the service I basically had this entire post...
Post a Comment
Read more